Quest III, The Commercial: ...and Now a Word From Our Sponsor

I wasn't going to mention this incident at all, even after someone who was there reminded me.   However, after recalling what happened and the real lesson to be learned I felt obliged to share this. 

On the first night when all seven of us came back to the cabin, we were trying to find a parking at the same time.  The place where we had to park, because there was no driveway, was on the angled front lawn of the cabin.  From the dirt road, the yard went downhill to the front door for the cabin.  Because of this, none of us wanted to park nose end in first so we ended up riding down the lawn and then turning uphill.  The set the rest of the scene for this you have to remember that it was dark, and a light drizzle had left the grass in front of the cabin wet. 

Each of us waited for the bike in front to pull in and park prior to pulling onto the yard.  When it was my turn, I pulled across the yard and started to turn uphill into an open space.  However, the bike in front of me stopped so I did the same but I was in mid-turn and when I put my feet down my right foot slipped and the bike immediately started to lean over.  The Valkyrie is not a small machine, weighing in at just about 1000 pounds.  As my bike started to fall there was little I could do while straddling it to wrestle control back from gravity because the ground to my right was a downward sloping angle and my feet were slipping on the wet grass.

& Kent immediately jumped on my bike’s right hand side and started to push against it to prevent it falling over further.   Even though he is a strong dude, he was not able to get it righted until my son got on the left side of the bike and started to pull it back.  At this point, I was able to stop the engine and put the brakes on to regain some sort of control.  Once the bike was balanced, I pulled it forward and got it pointed uphill.  A situation that could have been disastrous turned out just fine.

When I think back on what happened, I realize how lucky I was to have people who reacted so quickly but also so selflessly.  & Kent could have been seriously hurt if the bike had continued to fall over.  Not only was he trying to prevent a bike from falling but in no small degree, he was also dealing with my weight added to it.   Plus, because we had been riding, the pipes and engine of my bike were very hot.  He didn't think about that at all when he jumped in; he just did it.

When I think about the people I’ve been lucky enough to go riding with and the kind of person that I try to be when I'm riding with others; I realize one of the true joys of being a biker.   From the minute we put it up on two wheels, we are an instant community of people who were willing to put themselves out to do the right thing and to help selflessly.  If he had not been there, I would've been trying to crawl out from under my bike and pick it up from an impossible angle, possibly after sliding down hill and into the front of a cabin.  Instead, I walked into the cabin with & Kent, my fellow riders, and with a story to be told later about what almost happened.

Ya gotta love stories that end like that.

HBC & Kent.  May you all have friends like this to ride with.

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